


Stolen

by ahighandlonesomesound



Series: Bowmen [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, Lian Yu, Post Episode: s03e09 The Climb
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 06:09:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3718036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahighandlonesomesound/pseuds/ahighandlonesomesound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his capture at the end of Arrow season two, Slade Wilson broods in his cell, until he receives an unexpected visit from a fast kid in a red costume who tells him some life-changing news. Spoilers for Arrow from season one up to 3x10 'Left Behind' and the Flash season one. Rated M for language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stolen

**Stolen**

_For I have promises to keep_

_and miles to go before I sleep_

Robert Frost – 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening'

* * *

"I KEEP MY PROMISES!" bellowed Slade, clutching the bars of his cell as though he were still strong enough to wrench them apart.

The door leading from the jail corridor to the outside world shut, not with a dramatic slam but with a gentle click. There was a certain efficient finality to it. He released the bars and slumped, his head leaning on the cell door. With the final traces of Mirakuru leaving his system, his voice sounded vicious and insane even to his own ears. He had been consumed by poison for so long; the Mirakuru, his quest to avenge Shado's death…

Oliver, that was where this started and ended. Oliver, the whining spoiled brat he had taken in and shaped and made into a fighter. His friend, his brother, his traitor. Arriving home to Starling having been 'rescued' from Lian Yu and playing the hero dressed in Shado's hood and using the archery skills she had taught him. That disgusted Slade. The boy was dishonouring her memory.

'Rescued'. Slade snorted. What a laughable notion. Slade had had plenty of time to think about what happened the night the  _Amazo_  went down in the five years before he finally returned to wreak havoc in Oliver's life. The kid and that Russian nutbag had clearly got the sub working, it was the only explanation for the torpedo that had sunk the ship. And Oliver had arrived in Starling with a skillset far more advanced and varied than his fighting abilities had been the last time he and Slade had duelled amid the wreckage of the  _Amazo_ 's hold. Sara Lance had been rescued by Nyssa al'Ghul, that much he had learned as he tore his way through the international criminal underworld taking the resources he needed to bring the fight to Starling. Oliver hadn't. He didn't fight that way. So he'd been rescued from the shipwreck by  _someone_  and taken  _somewhere_  and trained. He spoke Russian these days and had a Bratva tattoo, that much had been in the ARGUS file he'd taken from the body of a dead agent in Central City two months before he made contact with Sebastian Blood. Perhaps the Russian from the ship…?

No, Oliver's skillset was far too good for the Bratva. Somebody else. He had his suspicions and the more he examined his new surroundings the more sure he was. These cells were supermax ARGUS, not unlike the ones everybody in the security world had heard rumours about, the ones where condemned wackjobs were allegedly given a second chance doing Waller's dirty work. So how was Oliver able to dump him in an empty ARGUS cellblock? What were the other cells waiting for? More opponents of his that he chose to capture instead of kill? Not that he'd killed Malcolm Merlyn, if the rumours in the international mercenary underground were true. Slade had heard mutterings that the man was hiding out somewhere in South America, on the run from the League and the authorities. Now maybe,  _maybe_ , Oliver had extorted the use of this cell block from Waller as payback for the whole trying-to-bomb-Starling thing, but she was a stone cold bitch and wouldn't give in that easily to some rich boy playing vigilante. Which suggested that she felt she owed an actual debt to him. Maybe it had been ARGUS who had pulled Oliver from the shipwreck, or at least visited him on the island at some point.

He sat down on his bunk. Between losing the stamina boost that came with being juiced up on Mirakuru and the after-effects of the sedative Oliver had given him before transporting him here, the effort of thinking was exhausting. Time to rest, conserve his energy, and start figuring a way out of here.

* * *

After a few weeks, Slade settled into a rhythm. He exercised in his cell, trying to keep his fitness optimum. He meditated for an hour every day, relearning how to control his anger now that it and the Japanese wonder drug no longer fuelled his strength. Once a week, a heavily-armed ARGUS guard entered the cellblock and gave him food for the week. Sometimes there were also books or newspapers. He preferred the books. They lasted longer and the bastards always brought him papers from Starling so he could be taunted with news of Oliver's latest exploits. The people of the city were calling him the Arrow now, having embraced him as a hero. The Roy kid had his own red suit and was operating as some kind of sidekick. The bastard had got everything he wanted. When not eating, reading, meditating or working out, Slade devoted his time to coming up with escape strategies. He checked his cell for physical weaknesses on a regular basis, and was slowly testing his guards' behaviour and probing them for psychological weaknesses in his brief conversations with them. There was a rather promising rookie he might be able to befriend if he played his cards right. Occasionally he wondered about where this prison was. The guards' visits were always preceded by the sound of a plane landing outside, so presumably it was somewhere remote and the food had to be flown in. He knew he was underground because the cells were dug into a rock wall. Maybe somewhere mountainous? Presumably ARGUS had a hidden base in the Rockies; they would need somewhere where they could shelter in the event of a nuclear strike on the US. Since he never saw a guard in between, he occasionally wondered if the base was deserted, but that would be stupid and needlessly risky, so he assumed he was just being held in a solitary wing.

* * *

One day, after several months, the rhythm changed. A plane landed the day after Slade's food had been delivered. He heard noises and footsteps outside, and then in walked Oliver. He wasn't alone. With him was a skinny kid in a red suit with a lightning bolt on it, and they were dragging a man in handcuffs. As he was flung in the cell across from Slade's, the two prisoners' eyes met and there was a sudden spark of recognition. Harkness. Slade spat on the ground, and the movement attracted Oliver's attention.

"Hello, Slade," he said levelly.

"Kid," nodded Slade in reply, "got another pet, I see? Or should that be sidekick? One teenager in red leather wasn't enough for you?"

Oliver merely grunted. Slade didn't even know why he was trying to get a rise out of him; he was implacable these days. But part of the Australian hoped that he could make the kid's eyes widen and voice go all squeaky until he realised his leg was being pulled. Just once, for old times' sake, so he could see the Oliver Queen that had been his friend and comrade-in-arms.

Oliver stared back at him, unblinking.

To cover his momentary confusion, Slade turned to the other vigilante.

"What do you do,  _boy_?" he sneered, nodding at the lightning emblem on the kid's chest. "Electrocute people?"

The kid just smiled, and then became a red blur that reappeared at the far side of the cell block before Slade had time to blink. Another split-second blur and he was back, his face pressed up against the bars of Slade's cell.

"I'm  _fast_ ," he smirked.

Slade grinned.

"Speed doesn't beat skill, kid. I bet our mutual friend here could lay you out, blur or no. What's your deal, anyway? Some kind of drug? That'd make Mister-High-and-Mighty here a bit of a hypocrite, wouldn't it?"

Oliver and the fast kid merely smirked, then turned and left without another word.

"Wilson," said Harkness from across the corridor, eying him warily.

"I've got nothing to say to you, you fucking traitor," growled Slade.

"Oh, come now, that's water under the bridge. I'm not the only person in this room who left ASIS to become a freelance operative."

"Yeah? Well  _I_  didn't attack an entire fucking specops team on my way out, did I? Columbia was my last mission before the Fyers thing, and you sold us out and then attacked us! You and your fucking boomerangs. ARGUS took too fucking long catching you."

"ARGUS?" laughed Harkness. "ARGUS didn't catch me this time. I stormed their HQ in Starling, no problem. I just didn't figure on one of the Arrow's entourage having a girlfriend high-up in their ranks who just so happened to be my target."

"Lyla Michaels?" smirked Slade, amused at the look of surprise on the other man's face. "Yeah, John Diggle's lover. See, I do my fucking research and hell, even if she hadn't been an issue you were still going on the offensive in the Arrow's backyard. He was always going to come for you, and you should've been better prepared."

To Slade's satisfaction, Harkness scowled.

"I had the Arrow and his red-hooded mini-me on the ropes when that fast kid showed up. It was all downhill from there," he spat.

"So, why were you going after Michaels anyway?"

"Tell me, Wilson… have you ever heard of Task Force X?"

That stopped Slade in his tracks.

"So it's real?"

"Oh, yeah, it's real," laughed Harkness bitterly. "The Suicide Squad. They plant bombs in your neck in case the mission goes to shit and you need to be put down. ARGUS caught me years ago, while you were still working for ASIS. They drafted me into the Squad, I was on a mission that was compromised… my entire team was killed but my bomb malfunctioned. I went off the grid, started doing some private research. It turned out Michaels was the one who made the call."

Slade felt a newfound interest in the man. He too had been dealt an unfair hand by life, and he too was out for revenge. Maybe he could play on that, use Harkness as a tool to aid his escape.

"Oh well," smirked the younger man, lying back on his bunk. "I'll escape eventually, and in the meantime there are worse places to be stuck than some kind of paradise island."

The words bored into Slade's brain like a bullet.

"What did you say?" he whispered.

Harkness raised an eyebrow.

"Didn't you see when they brought you in?" he queried.

"Nah, I was sedated. Clearly I was more of a threat than you."

"Well, you did kind of break a city a few months ago," laughed Harkness. "We're on some kind of island. Looks pretty much impossible to swim off. A load of mountains, a jungle and a big bay, from what I saw looking out the window of the plane. We're somewhere in the North China Sea, I reckon."

Slade froze.

"Is something wrong?" asked Harkness.

" _We're on Lian Yu_ ," he whispered. "That magnificent bastard has trapped me on a near-inescapable island, back where everything began for us. Fucking hell, that's poetic."

"What do you mean?" asked the other former agent.

"This is where Billy Wintergreen and I were sent on the Fyers case. This is where I met the man people call the Arrow. This is where I trained him, where we fought side-by-side as brothers, where he betrayed me and left me for dead having killed the only woman I ever loved. This island is the reason I 'kind of broke a city', as you so eloquently put it."

For a moment, Harkness looked stunned. Then he recovered his equilibrium and started chuckling.

"You're telling me the great Slade Wilson was taken down by one of his own protégés? How the mighty have fallen!"

Digger Harkness had always been a little prick, even before he'd turned traitor.

* * *

A fortnight later the pattern was broken again. Slade was sitting on the floor meditating when the door of the cellblock opened. He hadn't heard a plane.

He opened his eyes and looked up. It was the fast kid, holding some kind of tricked-out gun. He was talking to Harkness.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but I really need to talk to Mr Wilson in private. This won't hurt a bit."

He pulled the trigger and Harkness was hit in the neck by some kind of dart. He fell over.

"Hypodermic sedative?" grunted Slade.

"Mmm…" replied the fast kid. "Cisco only made it the other day, I wasn't sure it'd work."

"So what's your deal, kid? Drugs?"

The kid laughed.

"When you were busy tearing my friends' lives and city apart, did you watch the news?"

"Mostly the mayoral election coverage," Slade replied, chuckling at the private joke.

"Did you see about the explosion at STAR Labs in Central City?"

"I was a little busy that day, but yes, I did."

"It… affected some people. Myself included. Gave us… abilities. We're called metahumans, but that's not what I'm here to discuss."

"Does Oliver know you're here?"

"Nobody knows I'm here," was the reply.

"So how the fuck did you get here then? Can you fly as well as run fast?"

"I can run fast enough to effectively walk on water."

Slade didn't reply to that. He couldn't think of an appropriate response. The kid stared at him for a minute, clearly weighing him up.

"What do you know about the League of Assassins?" he asked.

"The League?" snorted Slade. "They're an international vigilante cult. Make Oliver and his team look like fucking schoolkids playing dress-up. You heard of Malcolm Merlyn? He was an acolyte in the League who left. Ever meet Sara Lance? Or the Canary, as Oliver's lot were calling her?"

The fast kid shook his head.

"Heard of her, never met her."

Slade nodded.

"She was in the League. The lover of Nyssa al'Ghul herself, I heard. Nyssa is the daughter of Ra's al'Ghul, the head of the League."

The fast kid looked at him for a moment, a calculating expression on his face.

"You knew Sara, you met members of the League?"

"Oh, I knew Sara Lance alright, kid. On this island, six years ago, Oliver Queen chose to save her life instead of Shado's. Shado was… she was Oliver's lover, and I loved her with all my heart. When I discovered the truth, I promised Oliver I would tear everything and everyone he loved from him." Slade sighed. "I failed. Obviously. As for the League, I ran up against them when I worked for ASIS, and Sara brought Nyssa and a bunch of goons to help Oliver fight me when I conquered Starling."

The kid leaned in close and muttered "The Canary is dead."

Slade actually laughed.

"Don't worry your head about her, speedy, she's been dead before. I killed her once, you know. She has an unfortunate habit of dying without leaving a body, if you catch my drift."

"She's not coming back from three arrows in her chest, a fall from the roof of a building, and Oliver Queen burying her six feet underground."

Slade clutched the cell bars. Sara Lance, Ta-er al'Sahfer, the Canary, was dead. If Oliver had buried her himself… she was gone, and she wasn't coming back. Ironic that somebody else had made that kill instead of him.

"What has this got to do with me, kid? I didn't kill her, more's the pity."

"I don't know details," frowned the fast kid, "Felicity only told me the basics. She was freaking out and I didn't want to push it. Basically, Malcolm Merlyn didn't die when Ollie thought he'd killed him. He escaped, and when you trashed Starling he came back home to protect his daughter. Thanks to your bullshit she ran straight into his arms. The League has had a bounty on Merlyn's head ever since the earthquake thing, and he knew that if they found out he was alive they'd hunt him down mercilessly, so he prepared." The kid was practically babbling now. "He took Thea Queen in, and trained her to fight, and when the League found out he was alive they sent the Canary back to Starling to find him. He doped Thea with some far-Eastern hypno-drug thing and had her shoot Sara. That meant the League's blood debt now extended to the Queens, and Malcolm worked it so that when Ollie found out he would go and challenge Ra's al'Ghul to trial by combat."

"…the magnificent bastard…" breathed Slade admiringly.

"So yeah, that was a few days ago. The others don't want to admit it, but they're afraid Ollie's dead."

The world seemed to stop. There was a whining noise in Slade's ears, the fast kid was blurring in and out of focus. Oliver Queen could not be dead. Ra's al'Ghul could not have killed him. He did not have the  _right_. He had not earned it. Nyssa… he could accept Nyssa  _wanting_  to kill Oliver, not that he would accept her killing him. She had now lost the love of her life to the Queens too. But only Slade had the right to kill his former blood-brother.

He slumped back against the cell wall.

"Fuck," he muttered. His voice sounded small and unthreatening in his ears. "Why are you here, kid? What do you want from me?"

"Information on the League. And you can call me the Flash," there was a touch of steel in his voice now.

"I've told you all I know,  _Flash_. The League are so damn secretive even I didn't penetrate too far into their circles. To most people in the intelligence community, they're just a myth."

The Flash sighed, and turned to leave.

"Thank you for your help, Mr Wilson."

Slade stayed slumped against the wall for a long time after the Flash had left. Oliver could not be dead. He simply could not be. Only Slade had the right to kill him, and right now, for a fleeting moment, the Australian wasn't sure if he wanted to anymore. How dare old man al'Ghul steal away that life? How fucking dare he? It was… strange. The news of Oliver's probable death at the hands of another meant nothing, even though Slade  _knew_  that between the destruction he had wrought during his time in Starling and the circumstances of Sara's death, Oliver  _must_  have been feeling the despair that Slade had promised him. But the man known as Deathstroke just felt empty. There was no satisfaction in his enemy's death.

After several hours of brooding, Slade Wilson stood up and returned to examining his cell's bars with a renewed intensity. He needed to get out of here and uncover the truth. If Oliver was dead, there would be hell to pay. And if Oliver was alive, there were scores to settle.

He had promises to keep.

**Author's Note:**

> I began this fic the day after Arrow 3x09 'The Climb' was broadcast. My headcanon on how Slade is fed was partly-confirmed by Stephen Amell in a Christmas Q&A vlog a couple of weeks later. I initially meant to finish it before 3x10 'Left Behind' was broadcast, but life got in the way. It doesn't matter much. I doubt Barry actually visited Slade in canon, but once Slade's reaction to Ollie's death got into my head it wouldn't leave until I wrote it. There will be a second chapter bringing this up-to-date with 3x14 'The Return'. Eventually.


End file.
